Ooo, I came up with another topic I wanted to move, before this forum blows to kingdom come. And nicely timed, before I would be afraid I'll get banned for touching the subject.Still, let's try to be very civilized about it. No name droppings, accusations, pointing fingers. Just speculation why, how and what can be fixed.

Sonic fandom has a pretty bad rep in internet. Can anyone tell me why? I don't take answer "because most fans are jerks". I'm pretty sure every fandom has it's part of jerks. What would cause Sonic to draw all jerks to him?

I see 3 reasons why people hate us.1 Despite everything, Sonic is a big, old franchise. Big franchises with dedicated fandoms do get on people nerves (look at Fnaf fans). To comparison, Mario is technically more popular, but there are much less fanfics, fansites, fangames, etc about him. Of course there are other big franchises with calmer franchises, but that's a start. Ben 10 fans have wars, but their fandom is a lot smaller and no one notices.2 OCs. Sonic and MLP are hated for their Original Characters. And it's not because we have the worst, it's because anyone can make Sonic OC.Try making Star Wars OC or Steven Universe. It requires some skill and though to it. Sonic? Take existing character, change color, add glasses, BAM, new OC. There even generators to make ones.Is this a bad thing? Most OC aren't suppose to be interesting characters, they something people make for funsies, as self avatars or something. You can forgive that in self empowerment fantasy people make them self "Sonic real girlfrined" or "new ultimate lifeform". Unless they put them in fanfics, then I require some quality control.3 Sonic doesn't have a "core story". If you like Avatar Legend of Aang, you like the cartoon. If you like Final Fantasy, you like the games (probably FF7). If you're a Sonic fan you grew up on either Archie comic, Satam, Aosth, Sonic X, Fleetway comic or games. And even those changed drastically between classics, Adventure-Sonic 06 and modern "simpler" style of writing. There is no 'true cannon', no bible that fandom can base on. First games didn't really had a plot.

The only problem with 3 point is that there are two groups that should be in same bag, yet their fandoms aren't in war (at least not as loud as ours)First would be very old cartoon franchises that get constantly rebooted: Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.Second are DC and Marvel Comics with all their games, cartoons and movies.

Naw, it's just a normal consequence of the average fan being young. Any fandom with mostly young teenage fans (10-15) tend to have a reputation for being annoying, after all, it's the age when they're just discovering the internet and deviantArt :) . Younger than that and they don't really create fanart/fanfic, cosplay, go to conventions, etc, while an older demographic tend to be more civilized and produce better fanwork simply because of more experience on average.

Sonic is a 25 years old franchise, so you'd expect the fandom to have grown more mature over time. The original target demographic ought to be in their 20s and 30s by now, but most of these people have "moved on", or regard the games in a nostalgic way, they're not the ones pumping out the majority of discussion and fanwork, the kids are. I've moved on from a lot of fandoms, sometimes because my taste has changed with age, other times it's just because I've grown out of the community. It's fun when you're 12 and hanging out with other 12 year olds on a roleplaying forum. When you're 18 though the twelve year olds seem like little kids and you get tired of interacting with them, and you either find a community of older fans or lose interest altogether. Of course I am speaking about general trends here, I know there are plenty of older Sonic fans too who produce some really stellar work.

If my theory is true then I don't see anything "wrong" with the fandom, at least nothing that can be fixed. Sega has decided to market Sonic primarily towards kids and teenagers without a lot of focus on keeping in touch with the periphery adult demographic, naturally the fandom will be mostly made of kids. I'm of the opinion that creators have the power and responsibility to attract the audience they want. If I were to ever become an original content creator, I would probably make something appealing to older teens, maybe because I want to address serious topics, or maybe because I don't want to tiptoe around to keeping it G-rated (may not be true in the future of course, people change), but Sega wants kids to play their games because their parents buy games and toys and that's fine too.

(Btw I'm not saying the reason content creators make stuff for kids is always out of greed, other reasons could be they care about educating children or they just like kids.)

So, what's wrong with the Sonic fandom? Ultimately, nothing that isn't wrong with every other fandom out there: loudmouth idiots with nothing better to do with their time than shout their stupidity to anyone and everyone, thereby making everyone else in the fandom look bad by association.

I don't know many bad Sonic Fans. Maybe It's because I stay out of YouTube Comments 90% of the time. I usually stay on places like this where the Sonic Fans I do meet are pretty interesting people as well.

I love Sonic OC's. The bad ones (Especially the really horrible ones like Sonata the hedgehog. That's the worst one I've ever seen.) are hilarious and the good ones are creative and unique.

I honestly have no idea what gives us such a bad rep in the gaming community. I mean, we obviously have our not so nice fans... but thats not exactly unique to our fanbase. It's just the internet mentality. We are a big fanbase with a lot of loud opinions, and it gets blown out of proportion by people who hate Sonic and the fans.

MetalSkulkBane wrote:2 OCs. Sonic and MLP are hated for their Original Characters. And it's not because we have the worst, it's because anyone can make Sonic OC.Try making Star Wars OC or Steven Universe. It requires some skill and though to it. Sonic? Take existing character, change color, add glasses, BAM, new OC. There even generators to make ones.

In all fairness, it's not like the official characters are much of a step beyond. They play with shapes and markings a bit more, but ultimately it's much easier to make an 'official' looking Sonic character from a base template than many other franchises. Exceptions are when you go outside the box like Big or Vector, and even they're not that removed.

MetalSkulkBane wrote:The only problem with 3 point is that there are two groups that should be in same bag, yet their fandoms aren't in war (at least not as loud as ours)First would be very old cartoon franchises that get constantly rebooted: Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.Second are DC and Marvel Comics with all their games, cartoons and movies.

I think the key difference with Sonic compared to the rest is that there's a degree of crossover and transition allowed in the other franchises. If you have a Transformer in G1, they'd be just as likely to be used in a new series as one from a later series, TMNT 2012 is mixing up elements from previous shows (bar the Next Mutation...but Venus De Milo's not popular in the first place, so most people aren't bothered), the Batman Animated Series actually had enough influence to make a new character a mainstay and reshape another's entire backstory.

With Sonic, there's no crossover allowed into the main backbone, at least not after 1995 (the last time crossover actually happened was when the franchise was four years old. Huh). As such, there's going to be more conflict because these factions have more isolated identities.

Last edited by Meliden on Mon Jan 11, 2016 1:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

"Brevity is soul of the wit", huh? But there are plenty other 'heroic stories' franchises that have better reputation then Sonic.

faceclams wrote:Naw, it's just a normal consequence of the average fan being young.(..)

Fair points (technically I agree with "Sega choses their fandom" part), but same question as to Mordum: what makes Sonic so special? Why we're more hated then, I don't know, Power Rangers fans or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Are we really the only franchises with right audience and size?

RaceProUK wrote:

MetalSkulkBane wrote:To comparison, Mario is technically more popular, but there are much less fanfics, fansites, fangames, etc about him.

Fanfics yes (according to FanFiction.net, Sonic has about 4 times as many), but fan sites and fan games? I'd say they're probably about equal.